Some Small Measure of Peace
by M.F.D
Summary: All of the men in her life are either gay or emotionally constipated. Or both. But at least Reno's getting better. Follow-up to "Bottles." on affnet.


Some Small Measure of Peace

Disclaimer: BLEH BLEH PONTIFICATE SQUARE ENIX BLEH.

Notes: Wee! More Bottlesverse stuff! Flour and Water will update soon (I know, you shouldn't have to wait so long when the chapters are like 1000-words-or-less but whatever). I've been in a Seph/Cloud mood lately, so send ur mansmut my wayz lul. Also, getting ready for college. FUN.

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It is raining, always raining, here in Edge.

Outside, children stamp their feet in ditches and send up plumes of gutterwater, as dark and dreary as the city itself. But they are laughing as they do it, and they dance about beneath the spray, faces shining like tiny suns. Geostigma is a thing of the past.

Inside 7th Heaven, Tifa wipes down her bar for a nearly empty room. Denzel is here, of course. Holed up inside now because of something far less exotic but equally as crippling, he keeps to his bed for the most part, influenza raging through him like wildfire, and tries his best to look calm and unaffected with a sniffly nose and Marlene's stuffed bandersnatch tucked into the crook of his arm.

Marlene herself has opted to brave the storm outside in order to visit Vincent. Theirs is an odd, sometimes startling and more often endearing relationship. Vincent certainly doesn't mind, though you would be hard pressed to get him to admit as much, and Barret only laughs when he sees his little girl riding atop the sniper's cloaked shoulders. Tifa thinks that they are good for each other, and tries to encourage them when she can.

The door swings open and she looks up automatically, but her greeting dies on her lips. There is a Turk who is not Reno standing in the doorway. She blinks, and it takes her a moment to notice the familiar shock of red lurking beyond Rude's broad shoulders. She breathes a sigh of relief; if Reno is here too, there will be no trouble.

Well. No bloodshed, at least.

Rude quickly and efficiently secures himself an easily defendable seat at the bar. Reno saunters behind him, obviously amused. He does nothing so simple as take a seat; ever the showman, he hoists himself up onto the bartop next to his silent companion and smirks at him as if to say, 'Aha, what now?'

Tifa shakes her head and grabs at the ponytail trailing down Reno's back. Wet, blood-red silk wound around and between her fingers, she grins brightly and _yanks_.

His head whips around fast enough that she is amazed it doesn't just fly off. Green eyes glare at her, but it is with mirth, not malice. "Fuckin' ow! That shit hurts, yo!"

"You're the one sitting on my bar," she chirps, deliberately sounding as annoyingly sweet as possible. Reno grumbles and does not move. She swats at his shoulder with her booze-soaked rag, but knows that she won't actually chase him away, in much the same way that she knows _he_ won't ever stop coming back.

It has been more than a year since the Advent, and almost five months exactly since that rain-soaked day, so similar to now, when the Turk staggered into Heaven and started drinking and forgot how to stop.

Reno no longer tries to drown himself with liquor, and Tifa sees him far less than before. But she has never seen him so _happy_ as he is right now. She watches him interact with his partner, kicking off his muddy shoes (she will have to mop, later) and worming them into the larger man's lap. Rude responds with surprising equanimity, hefting the redhead's legs up and out of the way. Reno is wearing black socks, she notices, because she is fascinated by little details like that, and really she can't help but notice, what with him flailing his feet around like that.

She turns her head just in time to catch the barest glimmer of a smile hovering around Rude's mouth, and is surprised, because honestly she'd thought the man a robot.

The smile does not fade entirely, and when Reno attempts, again, to sneak his feet into the warmth of his partner's lap, Rude does not stop him. Perhaps he, much as Reno and Cloud before him did, sees something in her that relaxes his guard and allows him, for however long, to feel safe.

Tifa looks at Reno now and can see what was absent in him before. His heart beats in his eyes, bright and pulsing, and this is how she knows that he's finally found himself some small measure of peace.


End file.
